The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has fined the trade repository UnaVista Limited for eight violations of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).
The fines, totalling €238, 500, are linked to the failure of the UK-based trade repository to ensure data integrity and to provide direct and immediate access for financial supervisors to this trade data.
The eight breaches of EMIR requirements took place between 2016 and 2018 and were found by ESMA to be the result of negligence on the part of UnaVista.
Specifically, UnaVista’s failure to fulfil its obligations relating to data integrity were connected with failure to apply the correct field ordering logic, correct mapping rules and inaccuracies deriving from cross-data boundaries.
The trade repository, which is owned by London Stock Exchange Group, was also found to have provided incorrect or unreliable reports for financial regulators owing to the data integrity failings identified above.
It also failed to provide direct and immediate access for financial regulators to trade-state reports and historic trade-state reports as a result of failing to deliver data exports or failing to have the necessary tools in place to support this data access (ESMA refers to this failure as “non-existent functionality”).
UnaVista has the right to appeal against this decision to the Joint Board of Appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities.
Anneli Tuominen, ESMA interim chair, says: “Today’s action against UnaVista emphasises the importance ESMA places on trade repositories complying with their obligations on data integrity and regulatory access.
“The provision of timely and accurate data to CCP and derivatives markets supervisors is an essential requirement in facilitating the monitoring and identification of systemic risk in EU derivatives markets.”
UnaVista announced in May that it will be closing its Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) trade repository service on 31 January 2022.
